


If You Are Not Too Long

by gayshitiguess



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: ACD Canon, F/F, John and Sherlock are gay, M/M, seasonal depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayshitiguess/pseuds/gayshitiguess
Summary: The writings of John Watson on the subjects of Sherlock Holmes’ hands, teeth, tongue, and seasonal depression
Relationships: Irene Adler/some unmanned random lady, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	If You Are Not Too Long

**Author's Note:**

> So I recently started reading the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes again and god it’s so good. It got me so pumped for the classic style that I decided to give it a shot myself. This was a writing exercise that I finished a few months ago and didn’t think I would post, but I enjoyed it so much on a reread that I decided to post! I hope you guys enjoy!

There came about Holmes a great melancholy during the months that winter melted steadily into spring that I could not understand. Had he begun these dips in mood in the months of September and October, perhaps I could empathize in some way. I often found myself in poorer mood as the weather shifted, whether in some psychosomatic sense or because of the ache that the chill brought to my shoulder. However, my companion seemed to relish the stinging cold during the winter months. He claimed that it brought a sharpness to his sense that was not available during the drowsy, warm summers. So, when February melted into March, Holmes inevitably grew fatigued, irritable, and unwilling to take cases. 

This presented a particular problem, as Holmes’s work was one of the few things, barring myself and his exploration of chemicals, that could distract his ever moving mind. As the new year dragged on into spring, I made an effort todrag Holmes with me wherever I may go. 

He was standing before the great window that looked down on Baker Street from our drawing room on that, the first warm day of spring. 

“Tell me if I am correct, Holmes-“ I began.

“Like a broken clock, my dear.” He replied without looking away and lacking any malice or life in his voice. I sighed and contained my annoyance. 

“But I don’t believe that you haven’t left the house since Sunday last.” He remained silent at this. “I was considering going for a walk. The weather is certainly fine enough. Would you care to join me?” 

He did not respond, remained like a stone gargoyle, watching over our street. 

Persephone had returned from the Underworld. And as Hades was sure to revolt against her absence, I too revolted against the absence of my Sherlock. Holmes may be regarded as the most stubborn man on the continent, but I believe that I am the silver to his gold in many categories. 

“You could use a meal, Holmes. Let’s go for a walk and get some food in you.” I carefully approached and drew the curtain over the window so that I may wrap my arms around him without onlookers suspecting any more than they already did. 

It was true that the public had been suspicious of myself and Holmes at the beginning of my writing career, when I was uncertain how to disguise the love that we so clearly shared. The illegality of this love was a danger to both Holmes and myself, so I quickly learned ways to brush the problem away. I embellished the connection and admiration that Holmes holds for Irene Adler. She is often spoken of in the public and Holmes’s secret lover, although the extent of their contact are infrequent letters inquiring on the wellbeing of each other and their partners. Ms. Adler had settled down quite happily in America with a writer. A female writer. How freeing it was for Holmes to know that he was not alone! The freedom that Ms. Adler allowed us was wonderful, and Holmes regraded her as no more than a worthy advisory, as the only person to have won him out in a battle of wits, and as a dear friend. 

As for myself, I created one Mary Mortson, now Mary Watson, who was fictional entirely and poorly conceived. I have never claimed to be a talented writer, and I have a tendency to forget the details that Holmes so often bases his deductions off of. For example, stating that my Mary was an orphan upon her introduction, and then sending her off to visit her mother so that I may return to Holmes’s apartment without question. In reality, I never left and I am a poor planner. 

These women of repute in our lives have hidden our affair quite well. The freedom and admiration granted by the discovery of others like us was hindered, perhaps, by the trials of Oscar Wilde. Holmes had met Wilde many times, read his books religiously despite his attitude towards literature as a whole. Watching as his acquaintance was remanded to the same prison that Holmes had sent countless criminals was difficult for him, and it left our affair with a sour taste. Our safety was tenuous. We were foolish to forget this for a time. 

I had never considered the fact that I may hold a man in the same way that I had held women until I met Holmes. I had not considered many things until I met him. As ever, he was at once revolutionary to my reality and dangerous to my existence in it. 

And as ever, his frequent comings and goings from the reality I understood left me somewhat lonely. I could not conceive of the way that Holmes saw the world, nor could he conceive of the way that I saw it. Our love was the brushes that those two worlds made against each other, the little understandings that we had of each other, and the long stretches of waiting in between them. 

“ _ If you are not too long,”  _ Wilde had written, “ _ I will wait here for you all my life.”  _

Holmes sagged in my arms like he always did. As though my touch were a tonic to his wounds, a drop of water to his thirst. There was great relief in each other’s arms that we could only find in the darkness and solitude of our flat and the few gathering places of those queer, like the men in New York liked to say, that we had found and snuck into on occasion. He sighed and bent his long, thin neck to rest his head on my shoulder. I carded my fingers through his hair, growing too long and becoming unkempt. I would have to cut it soon. 

“You are a patient soul, Watson.” He sighed. “John.” 

The way that he muttered my name into my skin could send me to bed with fever. He spoke it like it was forbidden and not my given name. I often longed to call him Sherlock and to hear him call me John while trapped in rooms with people that would damn us. So we had developed the habit of calling each other only in professional terms. It was beneficial, if not awkward when in the throws of passion. However, when he did mutter my name, it was in the softest of moments, when that cold exterior bled away to show the love and loyalty that lie beneath.

“Yes I am,” I replied, resting my hand on the back of his neck, rocking him slowly with me in a messy waltz. He laughed humorlessly, barely a puff of air against my neck. “Come, Sherlock,” said I. “We’ll go for a walk in the sun and then find a cafe to eat in, hm?” Holmes breathed deeply, hidden in the curve of my shoulder. 

“If I must.” He finally relented. 

“You must.” I replied. “As your doctor, I order it.” 

And so I found myself walking along Hyde Park, Holmes at my side. We passed the time in silence, as two men with the level of love and understanding between them as Holmes and I are wont to do. Every few seconds, I would feel Holmes’s fingers brush mine, an anxious want to touch without permission to. I felt the grief inside of those touches, the lost time they could not reclaim. 

We finally settled in a small cafe near Baker Street that we frequented when the time allowed. The establishment stayed open remarkably late, so it enabled our long night investigations quite frequently. This was one of the few times that we had visited it at a reasonable hour for tea, so we were greeted with surprise and energy not available to many besides my Sherlock in the wee hours of the morning. 

Sitting now across from Holmes, observing him in the sunlight streaming through the cafe, I could see the rings of fatigue around his eyes, the hallowed nature of his cheeks. Holmes wasn’t opposed to eating and sleeping properly, but he was likely to neglect himself in favor of a line of thinking or deduction. Some of these lines lasted much longer than others, and so I often found myself interceding his trajectory towards self destruction. The delicacy in his long limbs was beautiful, but it was dangerous, and it set my heart on edge. 

He cupped his tea in his hands, close to his chest. The wrapping around his broken pinky finger needed replacing. Ink blotted his fingers like blood. If I continue like this I’m afraid that I could fill a library with descriptions of Holmes’s hands. 

“What has your attention so enraptured?” Holmes drawled, his clear, grey eyes peering at me through his long lashes. My heart stuttered in my chest. 

“You.” I replied without thought. My voice was lovestruck and I glanced around us, to ensure our safety. 

“Me?” Holmes grinned. I observed the pull of his thin lips across his teeth, straight and white like a cemetery. The gap between the front teeth became a place for his tongue to worry over. If I could fill libraries with descriptions of his hands, I could fill forests-worth of pages with musings on his clever tongue. 

“Yes, you.” Said I, a blush creeping up my neck. How I wished that I could make Holmes blush as easily as he made me. “I’m always thinking of you my-my friend.” I stumbled over my term of endearment. I wondered what I might have called him had we been alone in our flat, or in one of our gatherings, or tucked away in a secret cottage in America like Ms. Adler and her lover. Might I have called Holmes ‘my love?’ ‘My darling?’ ‘My dear,’ as he so often called me, his voice schooled carefully to hide any affection beyond the love of brothers. Might I call my love ‘Sherlock,’ should the circumstances allow? Might I call him by his name in full, scream it as he drew it from my body, in quiet springs as I waltzed him back to the world? 

Hades screamed in my chest to pull him close and keep him, not to let him leave for the spring. 

“You flatter me, Watson.” His smile was sardonic and knowing, the way that he cast those eyes across me aware of our surroundings, but also of the subtext to my words. Always knowing, always privy to so much more than those around him. 

“No more than you can take, Holmes,” I replied. While I have struggled to adapt to Holmes’s investigative methods, my tongue works almost as fast as his. To this he can attest. 

“I think, Watson-“ He said. 

“Do you?” Said I. That drew a broad smile from him, rose color to his pale cheeks. 

“Frequently.” He folded his long fingers across each other. “That I might get back to work.” 

I cast my eyes on him with adoration and pride. 

“And I had hoped to take you along with me.” He looked down, severe grey eyes stricken with and uncharacteristic shyness that always overcame him when asking for something that might be rejected. 

“Of course I will come.” I replied as soon as the words had left Holmes’s mouth. “I would go with you anywhere, my  _ friend.”  _ There was a brilliant glint of mischief in his eyes as they flicked back up to meet mine. 

We walked quickly back to Baker Street, Holmes’s long gate setting an unforgiving pace. He slowed only when I complained of my shoulder, although most of my objections were false. As the doors of 221B closed behind us, Holmes was upon me like a wolf upon prey, his cemetery teeth and clever tongue ravishing my tender neck. Oh, the sounds he could draw from me! Oh, the love he could pull from my heart with his thin fingers. 

“Thank you,” he sighed into my skin, desperate and high. 

“Whatever for, my love?” I tested the name on my tongue and liked the way that it tasted. He grinned, his teeth glinting in the low light of our rooms. 

“For waiting out my ill moods.” He punctuated the apology of sorts with a gentle kiss to the skin he was exposing as he pulled at my tie, started to open my shirt. I tangled my fingers into Sherlock’s unkempt hair, put a slow end to his assault on my skin. His sharp, glinting eyes flicked to mine. His fingers ghosted over my skin. 

“I will wait here for you all my life.” Said I, the quote falling off of my tongue without thought. Holmes’s eyes were sharp and dangerous for a moment before they softened. His lips were warm against mine. 

“Wild, wild thing.” He whispered into my skin. 

And so Holmes and I passed the evening, curled together in our loving embrace. I will not detail the ministrations of our amorous congress. Instead, I will leave you with an apology of the highest regret. I am afraid that no soul may ever read this short passage. This detail of my life in connection to one Sherlock Holmes not only dangers myself, but also puts my dearest’s reputation in a precarious position. I do not intend to be the reason that Holmes sits in prison one day. I am sure that he will achieve this without my assistance. This is merely a collection of my thoughts on the matter, and a record of our love. Some days, I wonder what might have come should circumstances be different. Had Holmes or myself been a woman, we surely would have been wed. I wonder who our children would resemble, if they would have my fair hair, his hooked nose. 

I consider this along with the many other short reprieves of its kind as an apology to those children. I know that there will be no Watson children of my making, nor any Holmes by Sherlock’s. I suspect that either Holmes and I will finally walk into a situation that we cannot walk out of, or we shall find a cottage somewhere to hide away in. Perhaps in Scotland. 

I will not apologize for my perversions. I only regret that this strangeness inside of us both has kept us from a future that we both crave. 

To our children that will never be, I hope that you find it within yourselves to forgive us. I believe that, even in those of us still within the kingdom of God, there is an understanding of love. Surely then, you must understand the depth and severity of love we share for each other. I hope that this is enough to set your hearts at ease, and, when the time comes, to welcome us both into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me on tumblr at gayshitiguess.


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